The Languages We Don’t Know.

I’ve long been a fan of Gasan Guseinov (e.g., 2014, 2020), so I’m delighted he’s been showing up again in my RSS feed after a long absence. Today I read his RFI essay “Сладость и горечь языков, которых мы не знаем” [The Sweetness and Bitterness of Languages ​​We Don’t Know] (and listened to him read it in his wonderful gravelly voice), and I thought I’d bring a few paragraphs of it here and translate them; those who find them attractive can go to the link and use their favorite translation software if they don’t know Russian. He starts off talking about the pull of foreign languages, and continues: I’m writing about this now for a particular reason: I’ve just gotten back from Parma, from a conference on the Russian language to which Maria Candida Ghidini and her colleagues gather hundreds of participants from dozens of countries where Russian speakers live. I thought I’d easily be able to make myself understood—at least in a trattoria. I somehow managed to do it, but it wasn’t easy.…